UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor: Investigate the Possibility that Israel is Committing the Crime of Genocide Against the Palestinian People

As Native communities face an ongoing genocide and continue to resist the imperialist settler-colonial regime of the United States, Palestinians are too experiencing a genocide and ethnocide within our homelands from the settler-colonial state of Israel… When protectors at Standing Rock asked me about what Palestinians experience in our own fight against settler-colonialism, oppression, and greed, I answered sometimes through the language of statistics. Yet, more often, I told them narratives of genocide, exile, delegimitzation, broken promises, and resounding resilience.

As Native communities face an ongoing genocide and continue to resist the imperialist settler-colonial regime of the United States, Palestinians are too experiencing a genocide and ethnocide within our homelands from the settler-colonial state of Israel. Native communities have been displaced and relocated, just as Palestinians face mass internal displacement, home demolitions and life in exile from our homeland. Native communities continue to face the destruction and degradation of their land and water with restricted access to resources and delegitimization of sovereign authority and of treaties. Palestinians live under a structure of apartheid, militarized occupation, and settler-colonialism, which too has lead to the pollution of and lack of access to drinkable and potable water within the West Bank, Gaza, and refugee camps. This imposed structure by Zionist(4) forces has denied the Right of Return to Palestinians who wish to visit or live on their ancestral lands, has resulted in the disintegration of farmland to build settlements, uprooted native plants to replace them with plants that are foreign to native soil and invasive species, and built state-sponsored institutions on top of historic cemeteries and homes.

As Palestinians in the United States, we are exiled from our homeland while living as settlers upon Turtle Island. It is imperative that we demand recognition of the rights of Native nations and their people while building movements together with one another so that we can strengthen our collective call for justice.